The National Football League has a primetime game on their Thursday night schedule between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns and neither team can win.
I guess it is going to be a rare tie, because I’m telling you the Steelers in Cleveland and the Browns at home have a zero percent chance of winning tonight. Okay, that zero percent for one of these two teams is likely to climb to 100% based on tonight’s result but allow me to explain why neither of these teams can win.
The Steelers are under the direction of first-year Pittsburgh Head Coach Mike McCarthy. He takes over this longstanding proud franchise from the only coach in history to serve an entire career of more than three years and not suffer a losing season. Mike Tomlin was on the job in Pittsburgh for 19 seasons and led this franchise to a winning record every year.
Like Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak and Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl wins, that is a record likely never to be broken. He also stepped aside at a time when the roster of the Steelers was not up to recent standards. Particularly, and most importantly, at the quarterback position.
This is an organization that won four Super Bowls behind Terry Bradshaw and added a couple more Vince Lombardi Trophies during the 18 seasons Ben Roethlisberger was their starting quarterback. This year, and in recent seasons, the Steelers are looking for a reliable replacement … and they haven’t found it. They haven’t won a postseason game since Roethlisberger retired and today are led by Aaron Rodgers, who is on his last legs while approaching his 43rd birthday.
Rodgers has already claimed this is his last season … and in all likelihood it will end with an injury before the calendar shifts to January.